


The Fallow Bed

by Lookfar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-27
Updated: 2011-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:31:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lookfar/pseuds/Lookfar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus Snape lives a quiet, concealed life until a chance encounter with Luna Lovegood leads to a new beginning. Written for Snapely Holidays 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fallow Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iamissac](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Iamissac).



In front of a suburban Amsterdam cottage, the slender man diligently tending his tulips stood and stretched. He tapped his trowel against the heel of his clog, knocking free a clump of soil. He did not notice the girl with the knapsack stopping to watch him. After all, it was a busy pedestrian street and foreigners with blond dreadlocks and pierced noses were not precisely uncommon; mostly they came over from England to smoke marijuana legally and otherwise experience the permissive Dutch culture. He dropped his trowel into the trug and squatted again to gently arrange the dirt around several plants, pressing it into place with long fingers.

The girl approached the fence. He gave her a questioning look and enquired after her purpose in Dutch.

"Professor Snape, it's me - Luna Lovegood," she said, a smile of genuine pleasure blooming on her face. She did not seem surprised to find her long-deceased teacher tending flowers in the Netherlands.

A lightning-fast series of expressions passed over the gardener's face then he shook his head and replied to her in Dutch. Leaning her forearms on the fence, she looked down at him.

"I'll tell you what," she whispered. "I'm going around to your back door. Meet me inside in a few minutes."

The gardener replied to her furiously, again in Dutch, which did not stop her from detaching herself and drifting around the corner. As she walked, she clicked her tongue stud thoughtfully against her front teeth.

When Snape entered his kitchen through the back door, Luna was sitting politely at his small, wooden table. She had helped herself to a glass of water.

He assailed her in Dutch again, jabbing his finger in her direction and out toward the street, even gesticulating toward the phone to indicate that his next move would be to call the police.

"I don't speak Dutch, you know," Luna said. "I expect that you're saying you're not Professor Snape and that I've got it wrong and you're going to have me arrested. I understand that you have to say all that, but I do recognize you. I have very good powers of observation, you know."

Snape turned his back on her and fumed privately for a moment.

"All right," he spat, turning back. "What do you want?"

Her smile broadened.

"I knew it!" she said brightly. "How wonderful to see you, Professor. You have the best tulips on this block, I believe; what is your secret?"

"I asked you," he said fiercely, "what you want."

"Oh, nothing," she replied. "I'm traveling, so our meeting is pure serendipity. Perhaps we could have a coffee together?"

"You expect me to believe that you just happened to turn up in my front yard? You must think me a complete fool, although I confess my surprise that you have managed to uncover me. Who are you working for?"

Luna shook her head mildly.

"It's just as I said. I'm sorry; you seem to be upset that we've met. We can't really UNmeet, though, can we? So we'll have to take coffee. Do you have any here?"

She didn't wait for a reply, but rose and began quietly opening cabinet doors until she found the jar of coffee beans, the hand-cranked grinder and two white mugs. She filled the grinder and tapped it with the wand from her pocket, then filled the kettle and did the same.

 

Severus Snape, who had lived a modest and untroubled life since barely surviving an attempt on his life and a subsequent six-month recuperation in hiding, was almost too shocked for strategy. To his chagrin, he did recognize this ghastly Medusa of a girl flitting around his kitchen; she had been part of the ill-conceived Dumbledore's Army if he was not mistaken. He sat heavily at his own table, hardly knowing himself. Where were his wits?

The Lovegood girl set a steaming mug of coffee in front of him and settled down with her own, smiling mildly.

"All right," Snape croaked. "You can have your coffee and then get out. I don't want to see you."

He watched her from the corner of his eye; besides the nose ring, set with a moonstone, she had several silver rings in the upper cartilage of each ear. Through the armhole of her tank top, a scaly tail in green and red tattoo ink could be seen proceeding from her armpit and wrapping itself around her shoulder. Her soft voice and solemn air formed an odd counterpoint to these aggressive modifications.

She tilted her head and regarded him with interest.

"I'm afraid I've given you a bit of a scare," she said. "You can't have been expecting me. I certainly wasn't expecting you."

"A scare! I'm not scared, I'm disgusted," he answered. "I did not wish to be in contact with my former students or my former life for that matter. That is why I am in hiding, or is that a concept too difficult for you to understand? Now, who sent you?"

It occurred to him that perhaps this was not Lovegood but a dangerous enemy under Polyjuice Potion. He casually dropped his hand to the hidden wand pocket of his gardening trousers.

"Really, Professor Snape, I promise you. I'm just here on my own." The girl bent her head to sip the coffee. "It's a coincidence, unless it was caused by a Timestream Shifting Firmian, because they've been known to bring people together for mysterious purposes."

Snape relaxed his hand slightly; no one could be such an imbecile on purpose. He drank a little coffee. He had been working hard in the garden and it tasted good.

Lovegood looked around his kitchen. It was vaguely insulting, how free she was with her pale, buggy eyes.

"You live here all alone, don't you?" she said. "Are you lonely? I've been traveling on my own and it's been lonely at times. I meet up with people - Muggles, mostly - and we travel together for a while, but then we part. I'm older than they are, usually, because - well, because the war took up those years. You don't mind my mentioning the war, do you?"

"I do mind," Snape found himself saying. "I prefer not to think of the past. As you might expect from someone who was killed twelve years ago."

He had long rehearsed the speech he might need to make if discovered by any of his former associates. In fact, some of the things he had already said to Lovegood had been lined up, ready to fire, for years. He prepared himself now to fend off questions about how he had survived his injection with snake venom, how recovered, how lived until now and why here. But the girl only nodded her head sagely and made a clicking sound with her tongue.

"Will you show me your flowers?" she said.

Perhaps he could satisfy her with a house tour, give her the sense that they'd had "a visit," then Obliviate her and send her on her way.

Luna Lovegood knew a surprising amount about tulips.

"Isn't that the Viceroy?" she asked. "I've read about that one. It must have been expensive."

"Indeed. That is why it is in a back bed. I'm not sure I trust my neighbors quite that much."

"It's doing very well, isn't it? This is all new growth here. What is your fertilizer mixture?"

"I'm using blood meal, greensand and bone meal. If I take out that evergreen, I might recalculate because of the increased sun." Damn! Why was he encouraging her?

For the rest of the afternoon, he couldn't shake her loose. It was like one of those nightmares - he had them frequently - in which one runs and runs but makes no progress. She neither resisted nor accepted his demand that she leave, but carried on in her gentle way as if he were a willing partner. He had lived in this neighborhood for six years and did not want to attract the kind of attention that would result from dragging a young woman out of his house and casting her into the street. He hadn't the stomach for murder, not any more, nor a Portkey anywhere about.

At four o'clock, Lovegood announced that if he didn't mind, she would like to take a little nap. She curled up on his couch, head on a silk pillow he had brought back from China, and dropped off instantly. He took the opportunity to flee to his bedroom and lock the door.

He lay flat on the bed, trying to think this thing through. Why was it so much trouble to get rid of her? He must have grown soft in his time here, too secure in his dependable routine. Strangely enough, despite his agitation, he, too, fell asleep. When he woke, an hour had passed at least. Perhaps the girl had packed up and left in the interim. He smoothed his hair in the bedroom mirror and crept down the hall, listening.

A soft, melodic voice sang in the kitchen, over the sound of pans being moved and a knife on a cutting board. Snape eased silently up to the door; sure enough, she was cooking.

"Hello, Professor Snape," she said, without turning around, "did you have a nice rest? You've been so kind, showing me your garden, that I wanted to make you dinner. I hope you don't mind that I went into your pantry. I've got an omelet and a salad almost ready here."

"You presume I have no engagement for dinner elsewhere," he said.

"Oh, I don't mind if you do. I just thought, in case -" she said.

"You just thought," he sneered. "Well, I don't, but it doesn't mean I want your eggs."

Nevertheless, they ate at the little table in the garden. Lovegood had made some garlic toast which went very well with the omelet, and in consideration of that, Snape opened a bottle of wine. She was not the kind of girl who needed to fill every second of a meal with talk, and for a good part of the time they ate in silence. When a cuckoo sang, she indicated its location with a flick of her eyes and a small smile.

After they had brought the dishes inside and Snape had insisted on washing them himself, she turned and held out her hand.

"Thank you for having me, Professor Snape. It's been a little hard for me, traveling on my own, so your company was a real treat."

He considered pointing out that his company had not been granted voluntarily, but since she seemed about to leave, he let that comment lie and shook her hand. He closed the door behind her and locked it.

To make sure that she had really left and for that reason only, he pulled aside the lace curtain and watched her down the street, her blond dreads bobbing about, her army surplus knapsack dwarfing her narrow shoulders.

In the morning, it was a pleasure to find the house and yard empty of intruders. Snape had some correspondence to take care of, and he thought he would go to the market and then cut that evergreen back severely. It was getting to be late spring and he wanted to have the garden in good trim before it got too hot.

He had picked up all the branches and put them in a plastic dustbin, showered to remove the needles from his hair and put on clean clothes. He had a small steak on the kitchen counter and a single potato, for which he went out to the garden to pick a few sprigs of parsley.

"Hello," she called out shyly. He gave a start. She was standing outside the picket fence, knapsack at her feet, smoking a cigarette.

"I thought you were moving on in your travels," he said sourly.

"Not yet," she said.

"Don't let me keep you," he said.

"No," she said, wistfully. "I won't."

Snape gathered his parsley and went inside to fry his steak. Damn her for making him feel wrong about it.

The next day was busy for him. He had decided to widen the farthest back bed, which was hard labor for a man his age. By the time he had gotten done and dumped the turf into a wheelbarrow, he was knackered. He hadn't thought about Luna Lovegood - he had remembered her first name, Luna - all day, and good riddance. She had probably moved on by now, maybe to Belgium. Perhaps she was troubling some other unwilling host at this moment.

He left the barrow on the lawn and put his tools away in the small shed. He wished he could just go to bed, but he was filthy. He'd wash up, have a snack, then collapse for a good night's sleep.

He was standing in his pajamas in the kitchen, eating bread and butter, when he smelled cigarette smoke. With a sinking feeling, he tiptoed to the back door and peeked through the window. There she sat, moonlight on her hair, smoking away. As he watched, she raised the back of her hand and twiddled her fingers at him.

He opened the door.

"What on earth makes you think you can treat my back step as a smoking lounge?" he demanded.

"I'm sorry, Professor. It's so noisy at the hostel tonight. I couldn't sleep at all. Would you care to join me?"

"I gave up smoking long ago," he said coldly. "It's a filthy habit."

"I know," she said soothingly, "but just for tonight?"

Actually, he remembered smoking very fondly. Nobody would know, would they? There was nobody to know, except Luna. He stepped through the door and sat next to her, accepting the proffered cigarette and matchbook. They smoked in silence. He looked down at her bare feet. She was wearing a nightgown, a pale print of white chrysanthemums, with dirt around the ruffle.

After she finished her cigarette, she waited while he finished his, then fished two more out of the pack. In the light of the match she held out, he noticed the fine grain of her skin, just forming its first wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. They weren't girls and boys anymore, the children of his last teaching year.

They smoked in silence, looking at the moonlit garden. A spinney of birch trees formed a screen at the back, with a teak bench situated beneath and beds of tulips and mixed flowers on three sides of the yard. Around the bench he had planted some ferns and other shade-loving species. It reminded him of the Forbidden Forest, but he would never have said so.

When they had done, Luna respectfully gathered the butts into a small twist of paper which she returned to her knapsack.

"Better now," she sighed, "thanks."

He couldn't think of a suitably astringent reply. She rose from the step, hefted the pack onto her shoulder and glided away, stopping only to secure the back gate.

The following night he found it hard to go to bed. He had spent the day removing and saving offset bulbs, tilling and sifting out small stones, and by all rights he should have been tucked in by ten o'clock. He meant to rise early and begin amending the soil. He looked through a few gardening journals, sitting and jiggling his foot in the parlor. Finally, at 10:30, he checked the back step. Luna was was just striking her first match.

"Will you join me?" she asked without turning. "Just for tonight?"

He came out silently and sat next to her. She lit a cigarette from the end of her own and handed it to him. They inhaled simultaneously and blew twin streams of smoke toward the sky.

After a few minutes, he saw that she was not going to talk. Something about her posture, knees bent with forearms resting atop, face up to the stars, gave him peace. It was most unusual.

"No one else has seen my garden," he said suddenly. His face grew hot and he was glad of the darkness.

"It's beautiful," she answered.

They smoked in silence until those cigarettes were gone, then she tapped two more out of the pack. When she lit his, her pale eyes shone gravely into his for a moment.

She really was a lovely girl, he thought, delicate, not flashy. You had to watch her move and hear her voice to see it through the awful piercings and the dreadlocks.

"Why are you traveling?" he asked. It occurred to him that he had not asked a personal question in years.

"After the war -" she began sadly, then started again. "I can't settle. Something's wrong."

He nodded. Not everyone could overcome these things. God knows he had managed only by strict self-discipline and enforced routine. They made it sound so simple: deal with your so-called PTSD, seek support, build new relationships. Well, what if you'd never been capable of that in the first place?

He had no advice to give, nor did she seem to expect it. They finished smoking in silence, then she gathered up the butts and rose. Before she reached the back gate, she turned and smiled at him. The quiet was broken only by the tiny scrape of the latch as she left.

Wednesday was always for shopping. He made a list, although it rarely varied; for a single person with a small appetite, the small local grocery was large enough. He bought a bottle of wine to replace the one he'd used. Walking home with his basket, he passed the tobacconist and paused, then entered and selected a pack of Marlboros. Thrusting it beneath a bunch of spinach, he hurried on, turning his mind to the probability of planning the new, enlarged bed.

He had ham and spinach for dinner, with a slice of bread. He showered and put on fresh clothes, which was only sensible because he'd been digging all afternoon. He cleaned up the kitchen.

Settling in the parlor, he started a book on soil amendment and jiggled his leg. The book was not interesting. He started it again. Really, it was outrageous that he could not be at peace in his own damned house. Finally, he leaped up, grabbed his jacket from the hook and hurried out the front door. He took an extended walk into town, stopping for a beer in an unfamiliar proeflokaal, then walked home the long way. When he let himself in the front door, it was almost midnight. He went straight to bed without looking into the back yard.

In the morning, he felt renewed. He was able to concentrate on the diagrams he had drawn up for the fall plantings and found several mistakes he had made the day before. He changed into gardening clothes and worked on the soil in the late afternoon.

Too tired for dinner, he ate a slice of bread and cheese in the kitchen, washed in the sink and dragged himself to bed. He had just enough energy to remark to himself that things had returned to normal and then he was asleep.

Sometime in the night - perhaps not too far into the night, for the rising moon shone into his bedroom window - he woke briefly and smelled cigarette smoke.

Now that the bed was dug, Snape found himself somewhat at a loss. He tidied up the yard. The new tulips would not be planted until fall and not visible until next spring. He wondered how he would be a year from now.

He took the soil amendment book outside and tried to enjoy the pleasant weather. His teak bench had been carefully placed under his birch trees for maximum comfort, but he rose to find a pillow for his back, then a cup of water, then a pair of sunglasses. The day dragged annoyingly.

After dinner, he paced the living room for a while. Every spring for five years he had worked on his garden, building on the victories of the year before, ameliorating the mistakes, until he did, as that horrid ragamuffin said, have the best flowers in the neighborhood. Why was the process so irritating this year? Where was his previous, dependable, calm? He took his diagrams from the folder in the bookshelf and contemplated them. It was nearly eight-thirty. He wondered if the hostel was noisy tonight. She was really too old for that kind of rough living - almost thirty, if his calculations were correct.

The diagrams were not interesting. He decided that it wouldn't be amiss to have a single glass of wine. Next to the bottle on the top cabinet shelf sat the red-and-white package of Marlboros. He took them down, as well. What had he been thinking? He was well on his way to becoming a cigarette addict once more. He unlocked the back door and tossed them onto the step, then locked it again.

It was two glasses of wine, but he did begin to relax. He sat in the parlor with the soil amendment book, not reading exactly, but browsing the table of contents and chapter headings. This was an efficient way to approach a book; everyone knew that. He had just about come to the end when his nostrils caught a whiff of smoke. Damn if she wasn't back again, the little pest.

She sat on the back step, the pack in her hand. When he opened the door, she said, "Thank you," and held up an unlit cigarette between two fingers. Like a sleepwalker, without volition, he came outside and sat. She lit the cigarette with her own, glancing over with a bemused smile, and passed it to him.

The garden was still and colorless.

Moonstruck, they didn't speak, but a breeze shivered the leaves of the birch, filling the air with a soft hiss. When she had finished her cigarette, she waited for him. He looked for her to take out another pair. Instead, she dug around in her knapsack for a moment and withdrew a toothbrush, which she held up for him like a magician showing the set of rings he is about to vanish.

She took his hand, helped him up and led him back through the door, stopping to shoot the lock.

When he was still teaching, he had several avenues for meeting his sexual needs - casual partners and friends in the city. Here in the land of legal prostitution, he could have any manner of sexual favor for the same amount of trouble involved in buying a slab of cheese, but he found that it did not appeal. He had come to realize, with some disquiet, that the identity of the other person did matter in some way.

In any case, it had not happened in a number of years. But given that Luna was drawing him toward his own bedroom with her soft hand in his, it seemed that this dry spell was about to end.

"I haven't invited you -" he began weakly.

"I know," she said. "Shh."

Just inside the bedroom door she dropped the knapsack and looked around. The sleigh bed was an antique, neatly made with two firm pillows and a soft comforter. On the bedside table was a frosted glass reading lamp and a carafe of water. Luna gave a sigh of satisfaction, then carefully removed the nose ring and eight earrings, laying them on the nightstand. Then she turned, wrapped her arms about his frame and drew him to her. Before he had made up his mind to it, he found himself kissing the softest, warmest lips imaginable. With a moan of immediate pleasure, she opened her mouth to his, flowerlike, suggesting another warm, wet opening to come. Her naked body under the nightgown pressed against him, and his hands fell to her behind, wonderfully round and pliant. He tightened his arms.

He had the oddest feeling of letting go, of being carried along, yet Luna herself exerted almost no force, as if they were lifted by the same breeze that had stirred the birch.

His hands roamed the curves of her waist and hips - God, she was gorgeous, he would never have guessed in her baggy army pants and shirts - and up to her breasts. Fingers shaking, he undid the placket buttons and opened the nightgown. She had a sweet, musky scent that went right to his groin and he realized with surprise that he was fully erect. He wondered briefly if he might embarrass himself, but she offered him her breast and he forgot.

Sitting on the side of the bed he took her nipple in his mouth and sucked lightly. She cried out in short notes, like a bird. He teased and played with the other side, tonguing and nipping, drawing out that bird song again and again. Her scent was all around him, his hands stroking her nates, her thighs, her belly, while hers in turn caressed his neck and ears. She rubbed her nose in his hair.

Luna leaned back and tipped his face to hers. Snape had not thought of his face in a long time; now he remembered it with some regret, but she regarded him with grave tenderness and desire.

"You," she said. "I'm with you."

It was ridiculous that this should feel so incredibly good, should shoot directly to his aching cock, should make him so egregiously sentimental that in order to avoid replying he had to pull her down to straddle his lap and passionately kiss her neck, her jaw, and her mouth. Her tongue caressed the tip of his with the metal stud.

The nightgown had hiked up around her hips to reveal her beautiful blond cunny, pink lips glistening. At the touch of his exploring hand, she began wriggling in his lap with short panting breaths.

The feeling of her, the smell, the slick welcoming warmth and most of all the sense of her complete attention and abandon was like a drug. As she doffed the gown he yanked his shirt over his head, catching his hands inside the buttoned cuffs. She struggled with him to free them. Gasping, he gathered her closer, her erect nipples, her belly, her smooth, muscular thighs against his skin.

He had to get his pants off. Luna had the same idea, for she tumbled from his lap, pulled him upright, and began unbuttoning his flies. Working together, they had him stepping out of his trousers in seconds. His cock sprang free, dark and straining. When she knelt and took it into her mouth he thought he might faint. The feeling of the tongue stud, rubbing him right there -

"NO - don't - better not -" he choked out. She sucked for a moment more, rising reluctantly to fold back the comforter. In the silvery light from the window she was all soft dips and hollows and full curves. The tattooed dragon appeared in full, its tail wrapped around her shoulder, its legs clinging to her waist.

Luna climbed onto the bed, holding his hand and pulling him with her, then pressing him onto his back and straddling him again so that her breasts hung free and brushed his chest. He hadn't usually liked girl-on-top; he wanted to be in control and found the fantasy of domination exciting, but he was glad to give her what she wanted. She had surprisingly firm control of him for such a gentle woman.

She leaned in and kissed him, the stud clicking against his teeth. At the same moment, the slippery lips of her cunny slid down the underside of his shaft. He groaned and thrust upward, then paused, hands gripping her hips.

"Wait - do you need -" he gestured toward the drawer where he kept a box of prophylactics.

"No. Done," she said, making a swish-and-flick motion with her hand. Looking into his eyes, she lifted up and took his cock in her hand, situated it properly and brought herself slowly down with him inside. His eyes fell closed and his mind rushed into that intensity of wetness and heat.

Luna laid against him, mouth next to his ear where he could hear every gasp and sigh as she moved with minute flexions of her hips and pelvis and interior muscles. He had never been fucked like this before, all tension and focus and tiny movements, and the effect was like drawing a thousand heated wires of arousal out of his body through his cock. Despite his efforts to be still, he was soon helplessly grabbing at the sheets, twisting his hips and thrusting. Luna hissed and held him down tighter with her body, continuing her excruciating, slow climb against him, whispering her pleasure into his ear.

He liked to be quiet. He liked to be in control. He was quickly losing his ability to hold to those principles, and where he had originally feared coming too fast, he was being overtaken with the fear that she would not allow him to come at all.

"Ah - ah - ah -" she breathed, speeding up by a fraction that sent electric tremors through his pelvis. He began to meet her with tiny thrusts, hardly more than a tightening of his muscles, but she felt it -

"Oh. You," she whispered.

"Yes." He hated to make noise, but now, unstoppered, he continued blithering. "God, yes, oh. Harder. OH. Now, please, NOW." And she kept up that steady rhythm, building and building, no faster but step by step until he was sobbing and thrusting and clutching her hips and suddenly she sped, grinding herself hard against him and then came with a cry, rippling and pulsing around his cock.

Free to move, he fucked her fiercely from below, ten thrusts and then he was toppling over the edge with a shout, emptying himself into her softness in long exquisite gushes.

When he came to himself, she was lying bonelessly on him as if she'd been tossed there.

"Thank you, Professor," she said, very low.

"Given our - Please don't call me that. It's ridiculous," he said.

"Then?"

"I suppose you must call me by my given name."

"Severus, then."

"All right," he said. "Luna."

"Thank you, though."

"That's enough," he said, squirming out from under her. He thought he'd go to the loo, brush his teeth and then she might have fallen asleep or better, left. He'd just get his arm free -

 

The sun streamed through the curtains and he wondered what was pushing down the mattress. He felt so very well, he didn't want to open his eyes.

"Here."

God! What? His eyes sprang open to see Luna lodged on the edge of the bed, holding a cup of tea. He closed them again to find her image burned into his brain. She was wearing the shirt he had cast off the night before, partially buttoned, with the tail barely covering the curves of her bottom - a sight guaranteed or possibly calculated to stir an old man's cock.

"This is for you," she said, and he heard the cup and saucer settle delicately on the nightstand before she left the room, carefully closing the door.

When he had drunk his tea and showered and put on fresh clothes, he made the bed. He did not feel like facing her. He noticed that the little pile of rings had gone - all reinserted, he assumed.

And when he came out into the rest of the house, she was gone.

What a relief. He had some plans for his neglected front yard that he had been remiss in starting. Immediately after breakfast, he got out the front yard folder and reviewed the diagrams. He would be putting in an ornamental maple, trimming the boxwood hedge and taking out some perennials that had faltered.

After four days, he wondered if she were even still in the Netherlands. He didn't care, but it was inconsiderate, after he had showed her his hospitality, to just run off without even a note. He thought he might go over to the hostel, see if they knew where she had gone, then decided that they surely wouldn't.

He found it difficult to get fully involved in the front garden. His mind seemed to be elsewhere.

Naturally, after a man has had a round of phenomenal sex, he wants to know if there's more on offer. It would be just the same if he'd encountered a really first-rate Bordeaux or a rare plant. But he supposed he'd grow accustomed to his former state of privation in time.

He cut the boxwood very precisely, stepping back frequently to check the shape. When he'd tired himself out, he went inside to start dinner.

It was just an omelet and some green salad, which he ate at the kitchen table. After dinner he went out front to look at the boxwood once more before it grew dark. He was standing in the street, checking it from every angle, when he heard the small grating sound of the back gate latch. For a moment, he panicked. How would he get back in the house? He considered running away, going out for a long walk and a beer, but the front door was unlocked. In the end, he addressed himself sternly; it was his own domicile and he could get rid of anyone he pleased. He marched inside, straight through the house to the back door and stopped by the window.

She was gazing at the tulip bed, the blue of late twilight falling over her. Her face was turned away. She was smaller than he remembered, and then he recalled her breath in his ear and her voice saying, "I can't settle." She wasn't smoking. He stood there for a long time. She must have known, but she didn't turn around.

When it was dark, he unlocked the door and came out. He sat next to her on the step.

"You'll have to get some kind of job," he said.

She nodded.

"Work has been my salvation," he said.

"I know," she said, gesturing at the garden.

Then they stood up and went inside, locking the door behind them.


End file.
